December 22, 2002
Credit and credit aggregates, Lender of last resort, Monetary and financial indicators, Financial institutions, Financial markets, International financial markets, Monetary policy implementation, Financial system regulation and policies, Financial services, Financial stability, , Payment clearing and settlement systems
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December 20, 2002
Transparency and the Response of Interest Rates to the Publication of Macroeconomic Data
The benefits of transparency—the outcome of the measures taken by the central bank to allow financial markets and economic agents to understand the factors it takes into account in formulating monetary policy—are now widely recognized. These benefits include smoother implementation of monetary policy and increased effectiveness as markets improve their ability to anticipate the Bank's policy decisions and account for them in their operations. How interest rates respond to the publication of macroeconomic data depends on the degree of transparency in monetary policy, as the rates will rise or fall as a reflection of the market's revised expectations. Before the Bank of Canada adopted initiatives to improve transparency, such as the inflation-control targets, the semi-annual publication of the Monetary Policy Report and Updates, and the fixed announcement dates, changes to the overnight rate created some volatility in interest rates, and publishing Canadian macroeconomic data did not appear to have a major impact on rates. This article shows how the Bank of Canada's steps towards greater transparency have increased the impact of Canadian data on short-term interest rates and have improved financial markets' understanding of how monetary policy decisions are taken. -
Estimating Settlement Risk and the Potential for Contagion in Canada's Automated Clearing Settlement System
Payments systems operate virtually unnoticed in our daily lives and yet are crucial to a wellfunctioning economy and financial system. -
November 20, 2002
CLS Bank: Managing Foreign Exchange Settlement Risk
In the foreign exchange market, where average daily turnover is in trillions of dollars and trades span time zones, legal systems, and domestic payments systems, participants take on various risks. The most serious risk is credit risk—the risk that one party will fail to pay. Central banks, private sector financial institutions, and domestic payments systems operators laboured for more than a decade to develop a multi-currency settlement system to deal with these risks. The result, the CLS Bank, began operations in September 2002. It virtually eliminates the credit risk inherent in foreign exchange transactions by providing a payment-versus-payment arrangement for settlement. The CLS Bank is regulated by the Federal Reserve Board in consultation with the central banks that have currencies settling through its system. At present there are seven currencies, including the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Canada acts as banker for the CLS Bank, providing it with a settlement account and making and receiving payments on its behalf through the Large Value Transfer System. With the participation and support of the world's largest foreign-exchange-dealing institutions, and growing membership, the CLS Bank has the potential to become the dominant global mechanism for settling foreign exchange transactions. -
The Impact of Common Currencies on Financial Markets: A Literature Review and Evidence from the Euro Area
This paper reviews both the theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of common currencies on financial markets and evaluates the first three years of experience with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). -
How Do Canadian Banks That Deal in Foreign Exchange Hedge Their Exposure to Risk?
This paper examines the daily hedging and risk-management practices of financial intermediaries in the Canadian foreign exchange (FX) market. -
Alternative Trading Systems: Does One Shoe Fit All?
This paper examines the factors that lead liquidity-motivated investors to choose the type of market structure they prefer. -
Exponentials, Polynomials, and Fourier Series: More Yield Curve Modelling at the Bank of Canada
This paper continues the work started by Bolder and Stréliski (1999) and considers two alternative classes of models for extracting zero-coupon and forward rates from a set of observed Government of Canada bond and treasury-bill prices. -
Financial Structure and Economic Growth: A Non-Technical Survey
There is a large body of literature that studies the relationship between financial structure (that is, the degree to which the financial system is either market- or intermediary-based) and long-run economic growth. -
How to Improve Inflation Targeting at the Bank of Canada
This paper shows that if the Bank of Canada is optimally adjusting its monetary policy instrument in response to inflation indicators to target 2 per cent inflation at a two-year horizon, then deviations of inflation from 2 per cent represent the Bank's forecast errors, and should be uncorrelated with its information set, which includes two-year lagged values of the instrument and the indicators. Positive or negative correlations are evidence of systematic errors in monetary policy.